Resident exposes a fake HOA president, revealing to the entire neighborhood that the "HOA Board" was dissolved 13 years ago

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
May 29, 2026 2:30 PM EDT

Do you ever feel like your HOA is a sham?

Not long ago, I moved into an apartment complex with a mom-and-pop-run HOA. At first, the HOA run by residents was an absolute pleasure because the residents of the complex truly cared about the comings and goings of the mailman, the cleanliness of the jacuzzi, and the leaky fire hydrant by unit #401. However, after just about a year of living in this lovely, inexpensive HOA community, the sweet old couple running the organization decided they were tired and wanted to retire. Without much of a backup plan in place, they hired a new corpo HOA to replace them… That's when everything took a turn. 

Suddenly, HOA fees were skyrocketing, the trees were unkempt, the pool was disgusting, and the grass started to wither in the sun. Literally overnight, the new HOA ruined the entire community. 

That's how much power the HOA has over things. 

If you're lucky enough to have a cute old couple running the show, you're more fortunate than the rest of us. A man on Reddit recently lamented over a similar debacle. However, in his case, he was desperately trying to build a new parking padock in his property, running the construction project by the self-appointed HOA president of his community. As the process proceeded and his construction plans were ultimately denied, this resident started smelling something fishy. Was his construction plan really that unsavory? What HOA rules was he going to break? 

Well, as it turns out, the "HOA Board" was actually just one man, who made decisions without a rulebook, without guidelines, and without the city-sanctioned power of a real HOA. Why? Because the HOA of this community had been dissolved for over a decade, and he was just playing the power trip of being the standing president for a facility that no longer existed. 

This entire story unfolded as this resident dug deeper, sharing his exposé online on Reddit for all of us to enjoy. Because when it comes to justified exposures of people who deserve to be exposed, we just want to sit back, eat some popcorn, and enjoy their fiery demise. 

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  • Cheezburger Image 10634064384
    via Getty Images (RG Studio)

    A couple sits on their porch, enjoying a cup of coffee, as portrayed by models. 

  • We lived under an HOA for years. I recently discovered it had been dissolved since 2012.
    via matt76allen
  • For more than eight years, my family lived under the authority of an HOA in Michigan that I never once thought to question. It was a small neighborhood with no pool, no clubhouse, no gates, and no HOA dues.
    via matt76allen
  • The whole thing mostly just existed to enforce neighborhood rules and supposedly protect property values. Honestly, for years, it seemed mostly fine.
    via matt76allen
  • The original landowner's son lived in the neighborhood and acted as the HOA president. As far as anyone knew, he had always been the guy "in charge," and nobody really questioned it. Including me.
    via matt76allen
  • Then last fall, my wife and I decided to pour a cement expansion next to our garage for additional parking. We went through what we thought was the normal approval process.
    via matt76allen
  • Conversations happened, texts were exchanged, and everything seemed okay. Then the night before the cement trucks were scheduled to arrive, I got a text saying part of the
    via matt76allen
  • project was suddenly not approved and if we moved forward anyway, we could end up having to tear it all out.
    via matt76allen
  • So I asked what I thought was a pretty simple question... "What rule are we breaking?"
    via matt76allen
  • The response I got back was basically, "It's not approved, Matt. Bottom line." That was it. No bylaw reference. No township
    via matt76allen
  • ordinance. No actual written rule saying we couldn't park next to our garage. Just authority.
    via matt76allen
  • Something about that really bothered me. Not enough to start a fight, but enough to make me start digging. At first, I honestly thought
    via matt76allen
  • I'd find some small technical thing I was misunderstanding. Instead, I ended up going down a rabbit hole involving HOA bylaws, nonprofit filings,
    via matt76allen
  • township ordinances, and Michigan corporate records. That's when things got rather interesting.
    via matt76allen
  • Cheezburger Image 10634064128
    via Getty Images (RG Studio)

    A model works on his computer, making a phone call. 

  • I found our HOA listed on the Michigan business registry as a nonprofit corporation with the status "Dissolved - Operation of Law." The annual filings had apparently stopped in 2012. I was doing this research in 2025.
    via matt76allen
  • At first I assumed I had to be misunderstanding something, so I kept trying to disprove it. I searched every variation of the HOA name I could think of,
    via matt76allen
  • looked for alternate entities, dug through county records, and kept looking for anything that explained why a dissolved corporation was still acting like an active HOA.
    via matt76allen
  • I kept ending up at the same result. I immediately realized that our house wasn't even built until years AFTER the HOA had already been dissolved. And yet the HOA was still approving
    via matt76allen
  • projects, enforcing rules, denying requests, and acting as if everything was fully active.
    via matt76allen
  • That's when I stopped focusing on the cement situation and started focusing on how to tell the rest of the neighborhood what I found. I didn't want screaming matches or neighborhood drama. I just wanted everyone to have
    via matt76allen
  • the same information. So I wrote a five-page letter explaining everything as clearly and calmly as I could. I included
    via matt76allen
  • screenshots from the Michigan state website showing the dissolved status, along with instructions showing neighbors how to verify it themselves.
    via matt76allen
  • Then I did something that still makes me laugh a little. I checked to see if the exact HOA name was available as a .com domain. It was. So I bought it.
    via matt76allen
  • Cheezburger Image 10634064640
    via Getty Images (RG Studio)

    A pair of people sip coffee on a swinging bench, as portrayed by models. 

  • Then I built a website. The homepage contained the same letter I mailed to everyone in the neighborhood. I also added
    via matt76allen
  • an FAQ section and a password-protected discussion page where homeowners could talk privately. There are only ten homes in our neighborhood, so I hand- addressed nine envelopes, drove to the post office,
    via matt76allen
  • and mailed the letters out. A few days later, things got interesting. The HOA president was obviously upset and eventually joined the
    via matt76allen
  • private discussion page, trying to defend the situation. But the more he defended it, the worse it actually got. At one point, he openly admitted he had
    via matt76allen
  • intentionally allowed the HOA to expire years earlier to save money. So now homeowners were reading, in writing, that the HOA had knowingly been
    via matt76allen
  • dissolved for years while still continuing to operate like it had authority. After that, things quieted down pretty fast. No
    via matt76allen
  • lawsuits. No neighborhood war. No dramatic confrontation. Honestly, life just kind of went back to normal.
    via matt76allen
  • This all happened last October. Today, the HOA still has not been reinstated. Nobody enforces anything anymore. Nobody sends approval texts. Nobody talks about HOA violations.
    via matt76allen
  • And the cement parking area that supposedly couldn't be used? We park there all the time now. Nobody says a word.
    via matt76allen
  • And that my friends... is my HOA story (the short version).
    via matt76allen

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